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The almost successful Sumitomo Mitsui wire transfer heist is a spectacular example. The crooks posed as cleaning staff, installed keyloggers, used each set of credentials to log in and steal a higher set, and wound up with S.W.I.F.T. passwords. No word on what stopped them from transferring the intended 220 million pounds, but there are some human reviews of transfers that large.

ok, lets think about this for a second. The gaim logs of all my conversations for the past 3 months comes to... about 4kb. Assuming I am the average user (not an aim chatter), also assuming 6.1 million users that puts the database load every 3 months at 244GB; any user with a high end computer could store and datamine such data. These figures indicate a severe danger of a compromise of personal privacy.

now for my analysis of what it can be used for (read: ignore unless you want bias).
There are 3 major areas which could be compromised by this addition.
(1)code sharing between scripters; use ftp to share your scripts, if you dont have an ftp server, you are probably going to get caught anyway, so have fun.
(2)code sharing between application developers; unless this development is going to be used for illegal activities, the legality of anyone stealing said code would be called into question. Lawyers live for lawsuits against bigtime companies like AOL and would do such work pro-bono, however INAL
(3)code sharing between students: I doubt the university will ask for aim logs when prosecuting a student. They have no need for burden of proof anyway, they have complete power over the student as is.
(4)(yes i said 3, what) pedophiles: good riddance to dirty old men talking to other dirty old men.

my two cents are spent.

"Microsoft, especially likes to include patches for all of the subsystems of Redhat into it's security counts, and then compare that to patches for just windows "

By just windows... they don't mean just the windows kernel but everything that comes on the installation cd. It doesn't make sense for them to compare windows to a kernel. They should make it clear that they are comparing Windows XXX to Red Hat YYY though in the assesment. Even if they say Windows is better/more secure/whatever than Linux when they are really comparing it to RHEL, it only makes things WORSE when people on the OSS side start talking about Linux as an operating system. It just reinforces the position that Linux = Red Hat. That's not good. They mention IBM and HP as supporters of the linux operating system but that really talking about RHEL and sometimes SuSE for them.

There's the Linux Standard Base specification which is close to a "linux operating system" but ISV's aren't certifying to the LSB they are certifying to specific distros.

One of the main points I'm trying to make is how is it fair to compalin when someone like microsoft mixes the meaning of linux up but not when other people refer to the linux operating system? I don't think it is. Just how it is bad for Google to punish certain types of search engine tricks but use them themselves on their sites.

It's not just bad when Microsoft does it... it's always bad in my opinion. Comparing windows to the linux kernel is bad, comparing windos the the linux operating is bad too since it's not a tangible thing, although Unix to Linux kinda makes sense. That last link is a short article worth reading. It gives some insight on how the big guys push linux. It reinforces another point I'm trying to make. People love IBM but if you've ever had IBM try to sell you linux, it's usually because they know you want linux, they push much harder with AIX in the *nix space. I'm not saying that's bad... but then complaining when people like sun do the same thing doesn't make any sense.

Big corporations are involved in Linux now and there's a lot of big money at stake for some people with linux, open source, and related work. The whole XXX is our friend and YYY is our enemy is going to hurt the community. Things were different when people were just passing around floppies or ftp'ing things to each other. I think it's unwise for the OSS community to look at what red hat, suse, sun, ibm, etc are doing and evaluate the action... not just take it for granted that they're a 'friend'. There's a set of principles and beliefs that go with f/oss software that helps keep it what it is. There are even legally binding licenses to insure that happens. Just because corporations start using open f/oss doesn't mean they all of a sudden pick up all those principles and it especially doesn't mean that they have to stick to them if they decide it's not in their best interest. It's good that big business has jumped onto f/oss but it's in their interest to try and control it as much as possible and you see that happening quite a bit.

I don't know what you mean by "Wall Street", but most brokerage houses, banks and even the actual NYSE never used Windows for anything except desktops. The business has always been run on big iron IBM OS/390 and Sun boxes.

You are wrong, but even if you were right, investment firms won't have any patience for companies wasting money on Windoze, desktops included. My point was that they had moved away from that themselves and I find an abundance of information to back up my vague memories. Given the wrongness and insult of your reply, it's easy to see why it was posted AC.

My memory was of a stampede away from Windoze on the desktop after the early M$ dissasters, Melissa and Iloveyou arround 2000, 2001. The worms might have helped. I can't put my fingers on those articles now but I do find these, which offer much more. The time frame is correct, 2001, but the speed of adoption is faster and wider than I remember. Read and enjoy:

• A 2002 report of part of the stampede I remeber.
• Merril Lynch Complete top down implementation by one of those companies.
• NYSE replacing "dumb" x terminals with Linux for all the reasons M$ uses to sell their stuff.
• Some people from big companies who should know.
• The most informative article of all. Tracing the roots of the migration and it's totality, including taking desktops from Microsoft.

I've worked here (in NY) for the better part of the past six years as a consultant and I've never come across a major financial institution using Linux except for web and file servers. The desktop is still Microsoft's and the business is still IBM's and Sun's.

From the above, I'd say you are out of the loop. Microsoft is not on the desktop anymore. Sun may still be around, but people think it's expensive and IBM is doing well because they reduced costs with free software. Who do you service, hot dog vendors or dopes like Bankone?

The topic of disccusion was responsiblity and accountability for "security". I identified the biggest security headache out there, it's ramifications and why no company employing fall guys is going to get away with it for long. The bankers know, from first hand experience, what the problem is and what the solution is. They are not going to fall for blame shifting and excuse making when they look at IT budgets bloated with Windoze induced costs. The bottom line is what's inspected.

Remember that Microsoft won an Open Source Product Excellence award at LinuxWorld NY 2003.

Code leaks from Microsoft are not new. Check this article at CIO Update about a code leak a year ago: (emphasis mine)

Microsoft Corp. said it is tracing a key piece of code from its Windows Server 2003 software that was leaked onto the Internet, triggering concerns about piracy problems ahead of the company's scheduled product release later this month. The volume-licensing key in question allows for unlimited installations of Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 server operating system, the next upgrade from Windows NT that is slated for release on April 24.

However, this seems only to be a partial leak, not comparable to this complete (if it's real) source code leak.

The banner ad I'm seeing right now reads:

LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards
Best Integration Software.
Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX.

It seems at least a few people have heard of this "Windows". link

Feel free to call them and follow up.....

From the following Forbes article we have chief technology strategist from Merril Lynch Rick Carey who is "staking his reputation" on Linux. I'm sure he should be easy to find. Also Steve Yatko who is the CTO of CFSB should be making some calls to the SEC. Someone suggest it to him.
Wall Street Embraces Linux

And from this CRN New Zealand article we have a quote from Merril Lynch VP of Linux strategy Mark Snodgrass. I think he should give the SEC a phone call.
Linux gaining interest from Wall Street (Reseller News)

How about Mark Hunt, Global Directory, Enterprise Product Marketing for Reuters? Or Jeff Birnbaum, CTO of Morgan-Stanley?
Wall Street's Secret Affair With Linux (CIO Update)

How abou Robert Ryan, Linux product manager for JP Morgan Chase? What is Evan Bauer, former CTO of Credit-Suisse First Boston doing these days? Is he calling the SEC to stop the SCO FUD damage? Apparently Robert Liefowitz who is the Director of Meryll-Lynch's Technical Architecture Group thinks Linux is the secod coming of Christ. Has he called the SEC?
Wall Street Gaining Respect for Linux

An excellent quote from Ryan...

"TCO is king. If Windows was really a cheaper alternative and offered a more stable platform, we would not be able to sustain our arguments around Linux," said Robert Ryan, Linux product manager for JP Morgan Chase. "Linux ensures that the best-of-breed can win. In an open-source world, better technology has a better chance to succeed. Everyone's prices have dropped because of Linux. All the proprietary system vendors have dropped their prices because of it."

These trading firms need to put their money where their mouth is. Something like 3 trillion dollars a day flows through wall street. They have benefitted from Linux more than anyone else.

Also look at prepackaged software. Its all Windows based. Peoplesoft, great plains accounting, autocad, etc

Techincally, w.r.t. PeopleSoft, this statement isn't exactly true:

PeopleSoft Jumps on Linux Bandwagon

Announcements of this type are actually very big news for the business world, IMO. The biggest core application for a non-technology company, ie. Manufacturing, is it's ERP system's. Sure, Cisco can switch all desktop development off of Un*x to Linux because of the similar environment.

ERP systems moving to run wholly on Linux can be a very big insentive for bigger businesses to roll out Linux beyond simple Web servers...

The next hurdle will be trying to migrate the 100's and 1000's of little Excel spreadsheet applications over to OpenOffice/StarOffice. That is where some of the larger costs will be: training and user familiarity.

But I don't really care about that part yet. IMO, a businesses application development and ERP systems should all be running on Linux. All the front end applications that the non-IT people write can exists on MS-Office products.

Well, until OpenOffice familiarity and adoption occurs...